Federal Education Minister
Christopher Pyne
plans to increase diversity and choice in higher education by allowing universities to opt out of research and concentrate on teaching.

In an interview with The Australian Financial Review Mr Pyne said he would follow on from his budget “shake up" of higher education by removing the ­government requirement that all universities must be research institutions.

“In my view if universities don’t want to focus on research they shouldn’t have to," he said.

“I see it as unnecessary red tape and in a deregulatory environment we want to remove red tape and if a university wants to focus on teaching only, then that is a decision I think they should be able to make."

The plan to allow teaching only ­universities will challenge one of the most treasured perks of Australia’s university establishment: that all ­universities, even those with poor research records, must do research and be funded to do so. Grattan Institute higher education specialist
Andrew Norton
said it was possible for Mr Pyne to end the requirement for all universities to do research without legislative change.

He said the matter was one of the Higher Education Standards Panel chaired by former University of Western Australia, vice chancellor
Alan Robson
, which could recommend a change to the minister.

If Mr Pyne chose to make the change it would be subject to ­disallowal by the Senate.

In the interview Mr Pyne also signalled he was willing to retreat from one part of his higher education package – the distribution of government tuition subsidies which has particularly penalised science, engineering and environmental studies courses.

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He said he would take advice from a university-dominated working group on the so-called course clustering arrangements, which determine the level of tuition subsidy for each course.

However he said he would not back down on the overall 20 per cent cut to tuition subsidies, which angered universities when it was announced in the budget.

Mr Pyne said he believed there were some parts of the higher education changes he could implement without needing to pass legislation through the Senate, which is hostile to the government.

“I’m sure there are but I haven’t sat down and tried to work that out because I want the Senate to pass the whole reform," he said.

The government faces opposition from Labor and the Greens to the higher education package and will need the support of the Palmer United Party to pass it in the Senate if Labor and the Greens stand firm.

Mr Pyne said he was open to negotiations with the Senate and believed he could pass the reforms in chunks, drawing on support from different parties for different parts.

“It’s my expectation this reform will go through the parliament. It will be introduced by the first of January 2016 and then there will be quite a shake up in the course of the next few years," he said.

Mr Pyne said his changes would end the “one size fits all approach", which was the legacy of Hawke government Education Minister John Dawkins, and allow universities to concentrate in areas they performed best.

“Do we really need 39 teaching colleges in universities, do we really need 39 law schools, do we really need 39 nursing institutions, or should we have the best teaching colleges, the best law schools and the best nursing institutions?" he said.

“At the moment every university has to have the whole suite of [course] offerings in order to be able to maximise their Commonwealth revenue. I think that mitigates against excellence in all of those institutions."

He said that his plan extend tuition subsidies to private colleges and TAFEs that offer higher education courses would provide key ­competition to universities.

“I want NUHEPS [non-university higher education providers] to be an adrenaline shot of competition in the market," he said.

He said they would have the effect of keeping down fees.

“Universities which think they can charge exorbitant fees won’t have anybody in their lecture theatres," he said.

Mr Pyne also said he was continuing talks with states about handing their powers over universities to the federal government.

He said the current situation, where most university acts were state legislation but university regulation and funding was a federal responsibility, was “an historical anomaly".

“In a perfect world the level of government which regulates a sector and funds a sector should be the level of government that is responsible for the institutions they are in," he said.

“If you were starting from scratch, you would not have developed it."

He said the NSW government – which faced a large superannuation liability from its universities – was interested in handing its higher education powers to the federal government and he was talking with the Queensland government.

“But we have a lot to digest in these reforms and that [the handover] is a low order priority," he said.